Although running second on the road promised to be a big handicap today, Ogier caused a surprise by appearing at the top of the leaderboard after SS7. “It was a very difficult stage, and very hot inside the car, but we did a good job,” he said after completing the 44.03km test in a time of 29m29s.Prior to the start of the hot and dusty stage, the rally was led by Mads Ostberg who completed SS6 1.2s clear of the world champion. “I had a big problem with understeer on SS7 and it cost me a lot of time,” he commented after ‘El Chocolate’ which saw Ogier beat the Norwegian by 17.9s to go 16.7s clear in the overall standings. The Frenchman was fastest again on SS8 to extend his advantage to 20.6s, with only three short super-specials to come this evening.Kris Meeke (Citroën/Michelin) passed Jari-Matti Latvala into fourth spot after posting the second best time on ‘El Chocolate 2’, just 7.8s behind Ogier. The Briton then started SS8 at a similar pace and was 4.5s quicker than Ogier up to the first split, but he was later halted by a broken suspension arm.Mikko Hirvonen was third overall when his Ford Fiesta RS WRC/Michelin picked up an electrical problem on SS8, which allowed fellow Finn Latvala to gain a footing on the podium (+40.8s) after spending the entire day sweeping the stages clean for his rivals. After having to cope with a paddle shift issue this morning, Robert Kubica completed the rally’s first leg in fourth place, ahead of Elfyn Evans and Thierry Neuville.It’s been a dramatic day in the WRC-2 battle, too, since Tanak, Fuchs and Gilbert have all retired, leaving Ukraine’s Yuri Protasov (Ford/Michelin) as the class’s only front-runner to have survived without any major dramas.Saturday morning’s menu features the long and difficult ‘Otates’ (53.69km) which begins at 10:46am local time.